Gavin Orland » Society

The Neo-Enlightenment

Wednesday 29th October 2008 17:30 in Religion, Society

The age of Enlightenment occurred during the late 18th Century in the Western world. It should never have ended.

Ironically, it is the most irrational and superstituous people in the world, as I have previously discussed, who have ushered in this, a new age of enlightenment. Rational people are feeling they have been pushed far enough by religion and political correctness. They’ve had enough, and they are starting to do what they didn’t do before: they’re starting to speak out.

It started with Sam Harris’s The End of Faith. Then Dawkins’ The God Delusion. Then, of course, more followed. Hitchens, Dennett, Grayling. Then Pat Condell. And now something else is happening. The unthinkable. Cats are starting to be herded. The silent majority are motivating themselves. We’re seeing the Atheist Bus Campaign and the pledge against Thought for the Day. We’re seeing a resurgence of reason. A reaction among the people to being force-fed political correctness and religion.

This is the beginning of a new period to try to banish the idiocy of faith and superstition. This is the Neo-Enlightenment, and it will not be stopped.

Brand/Ross affair

Tuesday 28th October 2008 14:17 in Society

No, they’re not having an affair (though it might be nice to spread such a rumour, so they get a taste of their own medicine), but here is a good article on this latest mistake by the BBC.

This is all part of the embrace of decadence.

The particular incident can be distilled into these points:

These two broke the law under the Telecommunications Act (”[a person who] sends, by means of a public telecommunication system, a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character”).
There is no need for an “enquiry” (the tactic the BBC uses simply to create a delay in the hope people will forget about things). They should simply have been sacked.
It was disgraceful of both Brand and Ross to betray confidence.
Brand’s “apology” was obviously insincere and he has callously pre-empted his own sacking by resigning.
Ross does not deserve £16,000 per day simply for providing “witty banter”. No doubt he often reflects on this himself and wonders how he gets away with it.
These words “edgy”, “risky”, “pushing the boundary” etc., just mean puerile and juvenile and as close to needlessly offensive as possible. Let’s call them what they are.
The BBC thinks it is hostage to an ignorant public who love and demand puerile, immature, bullying smut in the same way as commoners loved public lynchings in the past. They do, but it isn’t. It should set high standards, not lower itself to meet inferior ones.
The BBC needs to have a complete overhaul of its licencing system - especially as it is now putting much of its content on the Internet and radio for free.

Platitude of the Day

Tuesday 22nd July 2008 11:00 in Religion, Society

I was recommended a site yesterday called “Platitude of the Day“. This site “translates” each Thought for the Day, revealing its banality.

A lot of work is clearly going into the site, and what it does is great, but I don’t agree entirely with its manifesto for change, which implies that everybody has an equal grasp and understanding of morality and everybody will be articulate enough and and indeed wise enough to advise others. I have not found this to be the case so far in my life.

The manifesto seems to be egalitarian to the point that it considers your local road sweeper’s grasp of morality and the human condition (or indeed the complex politics of the war in Iraq) to be likely to be as sophisticated as that of, for example, John Stuart Mill, David Hume or, on the latter point, for example, Christopher Hitchens. Now while sweeping roads is a very important job in society and not to be sneered at, there is in fact a low likelihood of this man having considered and researched moral and political issues to the same degree as these figures.

I understand the motivation - to include the man in the street as much as possible - and that’s great. Hearing their views is interesting, but this happens during news reports. “Thought for the Day” is supposed to offer insight into the human condition from a philosophical perspective. It must be a meritocracy if it is on at all, and I don’t have a problem with the “great and the good” providing they really are great and good, and not just religious figures. Any other attitude would, I think, be a little naive, and even smack of relativism.

Peter Gibbons interview

Monday 21st July 2008 11:28 in Film, Society

A classic scene from a classic film.

Oops! The latest free Adobe Flash Player™ is required to view this content.

Thanks to Łukasz Łakomy.

Government sinks to new levels of political correctness

Friday 18th July 2008 08:47 in Religion, Politics, Society

Awaking to The Today Programme as usual today (but taking care to turn it off during “Thought for the Day“) I heard Hazel Blears (”Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government”) say - not once, but twice:

“Islam is a peaceful religion.”

- Hazel Blears MP

So I have a question. Which part of:

“Disbelievers will be burned with fire.”

- Qur’an 2:39, 2:90

…does she not understand? Or perhaps this quotation is not clear enough. Maybe it’s open to “misinterpretation”. Let’s try another:

“Kill disbelievers wherever you find them. If they attack you, then kill them. Such is the reward of disbelievers. (But if they desist in their unbelief, then don’t kill them.)”

- Qur’an 2:191-2

Just like suicide bombers, there’s always another quotation to replace this one if it doesn’t do the job for you. The Qur’an is full of such sentiments.

So what on earth is going on here? It is easy to snipe from the sidelines, but the government certainly has a difficult job on its hands. We have a rapidly growing population of Muslims in the UK (the government here pays people to have children, whoever they are, and Islam instructs prolific childbirth - a perfect vicious circle) and they are following a superstition which is in many ways primitive and encourages violence. As the population grows, the government wants its votes. It also probably secretly wants this population to stop being so damned religious, but most of all it wants to avoid “offending” it.

So what can they do? Once answer is to try to “rewrite the truth” and hope no-one will notice. Simply assert that black is actually white, and hope that your mere assertion of it will cause people to believe it. This is what Hazel Blears is trying, but even the Muslims (in fact especially the Muslims) know it’s not true. I dislike this approach because it is for a short term selfish goal (the party staying in government) and it is disingenuous. And nobody likes to wake up to lies on the radio.

The other option would be for the government to to try to encourage an understanding of humanism and encourage everyone to place less emphasis on the Qur’an. That is to say, for the government to stop pandering to Islam. They’d better hurry up with this, because no-one likes their attitude currently, not rational people in the UK (who are rapidly leaving the country) and not even the Muslims themselves.

Robert Wright on feminism

Wednesday 16th July 2008 20:18 in Human Relations, Society

Not all of the tenets of feminism were misguided and damaging to society, but Robert Wright lays into one that certainly was here in “The Moral Animal“, which I’m thoroughly enjoying…

“One long-standard and utterly non-Darwinian doctrine of psychology - that there are no important innate mental differences between men and women bearing on courtship and sex [q.f. Germaine Greer] - seems to have caused a fair amount of suffering over the past few decades. And it depended on the lowest imaginable “standards of evidence” - no real evidence whatsoever, not to mention the blatant and arrogant disregard of folk wisdom in every culture on the planet.”

I find it insulting to women and blatantly anti-feminist that such an absurd theory was ever advanced in the first place. The differences between men and women should be celebrated, not denied, and oddities shouldn’t be presented as the norm. I suggest that if this idiocy of the 1970s had not occurred, society would not be in the state it finds itself now.

Women strike back

Saturday 28th June 2008 10:27 in Human Relations, Society

Tube Every time I get the tube into central London I see miserable looking women who have crammed themselves onto the train ready for the daily grind of workplace, shunning motherhood and more traditional values in favour of the pursuit of “independence” and money. They buy the drivel “Sex & the City” spouts hook, line and sinker.

I don’t like to see this - I genuinely feel sorry for them - though I would not give up my seat, of course: as one brave woman commented on the BBC site recently, equality only cuts one way:

“I am a woman and this comment will probably be very unpopular with women but you can’t have it all.

Women want equal pay and equal responsibility in the workplace - fine that is a perfectally reasonable request. BUT they also still expect, to be bought drinks on nights out, to have more maternity leave than men get paternity leave, to have doors help open for then, to get cheaper car ensurance etc…

If you want equality there has to be equality in all areas of life.”

I’ve got some news for the other women, and I’m not the only one: you’re no more “independent” as a slave to money than in a loving relationship, happy with your family, responsibly raising the next generation.

I think women should have the right to work for money, but shouldn’t be obliged to do so (I mean real women here, not the kind who are so masculine they are virtually men). Of course, some have no choice but to take this course - but I’m concerned about the many others who have been mind-washed with feminism since birth and made to feel inferior if they do not choose it.

Such decisions, along with the belittling of men, the removal of rights from fathers, the glorification of binge drinking, smoking and casual sex, not to mention rampant political correctness, are busily destroying the fabric of western society - and we’re seeing this in both the rise of fanatical Islam, to which it is handing an open goal, and in the way the youth of today are turning out.

But don’t let me do all the talking, let’s hand it over to a female contributor to the radio this morning:

“As a so-called liberated woman I often find myself longing for the repression of the 1950s - a period which I remember as a child. I remember my mother doing her housework and shopping in the morning at good local shops where people spoke to each other and knew each other. She and her neighbours then sat about chatting, knitting and watching their children play for the rest of the afternoon until it was time to start preparing the dinner.

Compare this to my experience of reading “The Female Eunuch” at an impressionable age and trying like mad to be a “liberated career woman”. The result has been a life of stress, trying to bring up children as well as work full-time and then come home to homework, cooking, cleaning, etc.

I dream of being in a room with Germaine and telling her exactly what I think of her: she condemned a generation of women to having always to do at least two jobs and never getting any time to themselves, except at the expense of their children.”

- Elizabeth, Saturday Live, Radio 4

Women are starting to fight back - they can see how they’ve been duped - and what a good job too. Maybe there is hope for society after all.

Changing values

Friday 6th June 2008 12:19 in Society

Somehow, in not so long a period of time, we have gone from this kind of look being admired:

To this kind of look being admired:

That is to say, we’ve gone from a look of debonair responsibility in men and voluptuous femininity in women, to a look of self-indulgence, coldness, malnutrition and personal abandon. Somehow this is considered cool, but I consider it to be pitiful. I actually saw Lily Cole in the Dorchester Hotel not so long ago, and she didn’t look too happy there either. That these kinds of things are happening in society is a great shame, but we are always free to reject and ignore the values promoted by trashy tabloids and in advertising and instead assert our own.

In the news today

Wednesday 28th May 2008 09:27 in Religion, Politics, Society

Another day, another set of politically correct headlines on the Today Programme this morning. The trouble is there is no more truthful alternative on the airwaves in the UK. For that we need to turn to the Internet and the likes of Pat Condell.

Today we had the Bishop of Rochester declaring again that “a moral and spiritual vacuum” has occurred in Britain since the sixties, and that lays the door wide open for radical Islam to take its place. But “radical Islam” is a tautology: Islam is radical. To prove this to yourself all you need to do is actually read the Koran. Anyway, the bishop has accordingly received death threats from Muslims, as do most people who dare to criticise “the religion of peace” as it expands steadily across Europe.

I’m not so sure about a “spiritual” vacuum, sadly, with the continued prevalence of astral projection, meditation, tree-hugging and all the other weird and baseless things people believe in, but a moral vacuum is obvious, and of great concern. The trouble is though that this, of course, should no more be replaced with “Biblical values” as the Bishop claims, than with those from the Koran. Were that to happen, we would all be thrown back into the moral Dark Ages. For 885 examples of the kind of values found in the Bible, see here. That should surely be enough for anybody.

The next article was about the mother of Victoria Climbie, the girl who was abused and killed by her foster parents in the UK and this abuse was not acted upon because of incompetence and political correctness within London Social Services. Her mother was shocked about this and rightly so.

What we are not allowed to say, however, is that Victoria travelled from the Ivory Coast under a false passport and that Mrs Climbie was irresponsible for ever allowing her child to go with these foster parents, one of whom she hardly knew, the other who she had not even met. We’re not allowed to say that, partly because this kind of “informal fosterage” (to which we inexplicably open our doors) is a custom in West Africa, and to criticise it would be to go against the grain of cultural relativism - the odious partner in crime of political correctness, both of which are currently eating away at our society. We’re not allowed to say it, but I’m saying it anyway, and I will continue to say whatever is true.

The bishop is right that we need to get a grip on morality in this country, but wrong (as are so many) about where the answer is to be found. The moral vacuum in the United Kingdom must be replaced by enforcement of the law, the elimination of political correctness and promotion of secular Humanism, and it had better begin to happen soon.

Musing

Monday 26th May 2008 18:33 in Society

I stroll down the road away from my property here in Balham, heading towards the centre of the district. I pass the usual overgrown front gardens full of junk and wonder why the councils here have no authority to order people to keep their properties in a good state of repair, as they can in America, then I remember political correctness. Of course, what right have they to tell people to keep the environment pleasant to behold? This is a society of rights more than duties, and that is its fundamental problem.

I continue on my way. I step around slow moving “trendy” loud-talking smokers, killing themselves, and me if I let them. I move back from the gutter to the pavement, now ahead of them.

The poster of that obnoxious foul-mouthed chef has been replaced by one of Sir Michael Parkinson (no, he didn’t win a Nobel prize, he’s just a chat show host). He’s saying:

“Once you’ve tried Sky Plus you won’t be able to imagine life without it”.

That sounds to me clearly like a reason not to get it, whatever it is, than to get it. One can imagine a similar ad for heroin. Who wants to be hooked on something you don’t need? The intrusive advertising everywhere, on video on the underground now, brings Blade Runner’s dystopian society ever closer.

I arrive at a bar where they picked up furniture for free and charge £3.20 for a pint. It costs only 40p to make the equivalent at home. I’m shocked by the price but I like the change of scene. I don’t like the people, I like the place, which is like a time-warp back to the 1950s.

Young men nearby play snooker, lazily. They’re in the de riguer Balham “man-boy” uniform of jeans, striped polo shirts and trainers. They chat about unsubstantial things. Extreme profanity is injected into their conversation casually: it has lost all shock value for them. This seems disgustingly decadent to me. They couldn’t care less if I hear them. Not necessarily because they don’t care about offending me; rather because it would seem to them quaint and unlikely that anyone could ever find their language offensive. They’re that far gone. They have jobs: they seem to work in advertising (no surprises there, then). I know from experience that their true colours will likely not need to be hidden in their workplace: this manner would more probably be admired. But are these really their true colours? It is perversely possible, in this morally topsy-turvy society, that this vulgar abandon is affected in order to earn respect. Conversation gets around to girlfriends too - they have them, of course. I think about what I would do with these people in my company. Sack them. It’s that simple.

I move on. Walking through the smokescreen of junkies outside the door, I sit in a new place and observe the pub-going people of Balham. It is fashionable to dress down - for the women too. Everybody is dressed.. well, as if they just don’t care. I wonder what people from earlier eras would have made of this. Wealth has increased, standards have declined. It has perversely become a statement of one’s status to say “I don’t care”. But - though common - it is in fact a shameful and decadent statement.

I’m reading a book on evolutionary psychology and Darwinian theory called “The Moral Animal”, by Robert Wright. I wonder if it will be too reductionist.

I look around a little more. I note how many women seem to go in for the fake blond look now. I wonder why. It seems a little ironic that these women, who typically have no intention of adopting a natural female role (until, of course, it is too late), are interested in appearing youthful and appealing. Personally I prefer dark hair, and had they kept theirs that way, it would have had the added appeal of being genuine.

A quotation from Charles Darwin during his voyage on the Beagle takes on a greater poignancy than he can ever have feared it would in London today:

“As for an English lady, I have almost forgotten what she is - something very angelic and good.”

A man stands before me a weird mixture of country squire and urban pygmy. On his head he wears a flat cap but up his entire leg is a tattoo. Men are dressed as boys - t-shirts, trainers. They all drink lager. Women are dressed… unremarkably. They’re not really dressed at all. Not tailored. They all just wear nondescript things that hang on them, devoid of any femininity.

These are only the people in the pub. There are others, elsewhere. But I’m sorry to see what I see and I’m sorry I cannot report more favorably about this, my country. But not that sorry, because I expect I will do what two million others have done in recent years: I’ll leave for somewhere better - a society where people have more well-earned personal pride and that is not destroying itself through a combination of political correctness and cultural decadence.

I listen to Damien Rice to drown out the loud noise. It’s very nice. I wonder whether I can safely leave my book on the table while I pop out briefly. I remember myself: it’s a book, not a Playstation. It’s extremely unlikely anyone in here would even care which book it is.

Damien Rice’s “Eskimo” soars and I return to my book, only to look up when Offenbach’s beautiful “Barcarolle” draws such a contrast with my surroundings. I fondly remember my beautiful girlfriend, the epitome of all things that are lacking here, as she sang this sublimely in Florida.